Little lie, big lie
Sep. 28th, 2007 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamIt's not only on the Internet people lie about tragedies to befall them.
Tania Head’s story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.
She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Center despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower. (...)
But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.
Wow. Never ceases to amaze me what people will lie about, really. For attention, for sympathy - I know there have been people lying about surviving Auschwitz as well (one case I remember even involved writing a book), so perhaps this shouldn't surprise me. Almost everyone lies now and then - but I think most stick to little ones. When you go for a big one like this - wouldn't you expect to be caught sooner or later?
At least in this case it doesn't seem to have been about money.
So - tell me a truth about yourself?
Also, today many in my country are wearing red in solidarity with the people of Burma, so I'm using a vaguely red icon. What is going on there is definitely not good. Haven't been good for a long time, in fact. But perhaps this time, a change can come. Perhaps. (This explains the background for it, for those who feel a little in the dark.)
Meanwhile, err? Writing a fic just to tell others to review a friend's fic? What does fandom etiquette say on that?
Tania Head’s story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.
She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Center despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower. (...)
But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.
Wow. Never ceases to amaze me what people will lie about, really. For attention, for sympathy - I know there have been people lying about surviving Auschwitz as well (one case I remember even involved writing a book), so perhaps this shouldn't surprise me. Almost everyone lies now and then - but I think most stick to little ones. When you go for a big one like this - wouldn't you expect to be caught sooner or later?
At least in this case it doesn't seem to have been about money.
So - tell me a truth about yourself?
Also, today many in my country are wearing red in solidarity with the people of Burma, so I'm using a vaguely red icon. What is going on there is definitely not good. Haven't been good for a long time, in fact. But perhaps this time, a change can come. Perhaps. (This explains the background for it, for those who feel a little in the dark.)
Meanwhile, err? Writing a fic just to tell others to review a friend's fic? What does fandom etiquette say on that?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-09-28 12:37 pm (UTC)It says leave a review...just maybe not one that they were hoping to get. Sheesh.
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Date: 2007-09-28 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 01:26 pm (UTC)But this is also the man who forbade my mother to call and tell me when he'd had a heart attack. I'd just started college and he didn't want to screw up my education by having me come home...
Parents are weird. (Yay, yours! 30 years is awesome.)
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Date: 2007-09-28 12:44 pm (UTC)There you go, applying normal sane person logic. *sighs* I have to say, my jaw actually dropped when I read that article you linked to.
As for the fic pimping for reviews for another fic, I'd be more likely to be forgiving if it wasn't such a dreadful piece of writing.
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Date: 2007-09-28 01:08 pm (UTC)So you'd forgive review begging if it came in the form of well-written porn?
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Date: 2007-09-29 09:14 am (UTC)... Probably, as the saying goes, "up to and including genocide."
Especially if it only was the real dipwad world leaders... Kim Jong Il, the bastards running Myanmar by pure force, a bunch of the Chinese (those gits keep getting caught over here in the USA, I wonder why? }:=8} ), and the guys continuing the genocide in Darfur, just for starters.
Notice how I didn't mention Bush? He's a given anyway.
... And now that I look back on that list, it makes me weep for this very planet...
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Date: 2007-10-01 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 01:19 pm (UTC)Yup, the book in question is Binjamin Wilkomorski's "autobiography" 'Bruchstücke. Aus einer Kindheit 1939-1948' ("Fragments. From a Childhood, 1939-1948"), and it caused a huge scandal in the German literary scene, as you might imagine. The sad thing is that his book would probably have been perfectly acceptable as a novel. In Wilkomirski's case, it also remained controversial whether he was a calculating liar or a deeply disturbed person who'd started to actually believe in his own fabrications.
And now I'm wondering about this 9/11 woman, too. Was she just out for attention, or does she need help? The latter wouldn't be as hurtful and shocking to the actual victims, I assume.
So - tell me a truth about yourself?
You even get a truth about some of my white lies. In RL, I sometimes act more awkward/clumsy/helpless than I truly am to avoid having to do unpleasant work (mostly cleaning-up jobs in our dorm) all on my own. Not very nice of me, I know, but just don't tell my dormmates. ;)
(Deleted & reposted because HTML sucks.)
Here's a truth
Date: 2007-09-28 01:45 pm (UTC)(It was down at my local market. I also once fell over on a plum there, but that's not a comedy cliché!)
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Date: 2007-09-28 02:03 pm (UTC)So - tell me a truth about yourself?
I'm not immune to telling white lies occasionally. Mostly innocuous stuff to make me look a wee bit more interesting than I am.
Like when somebody asks you if you've been to that new cool club they've recently opened and you reply "Yeah. Sure. Nice decor, isn't it?" When in fact you haven't the foggiest idea but don't want to look like you have no social life.
Or something similar.
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Date: 2007-09-28 02:18 pm (UTC)I ate a doughnut that I shouldn't have eaten this morning.
Um...something more exciting, maybe?
I've seen lots of cool bands, but I missed getting to see the Damned, and I still regret it (though since there was a riot at the concert, it was probably for the best. Apparently, there was a fight over which was better: British or American punk. There were fists and knives and a gun pulled. The redneck cops who were called were heard to say, as they led the instigators away, "I hear you boys like handcuffs.")
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Date: 2007-09-28 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 02:33 pm (UTC)Ah. A truth about me and my tattoos. :) I do not get tattoos for how they look on me after I've gotten them, though I do keep that in mind. I get them because A) I like the pain of getting them (hi, masochist and cutter), and B) because my girlfriend takes such a fascination in them and loves them so much.
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Date: 2007-09-28 02:58 pm (UTC)I'd probably be a bit embarrassed if someone wrote a fanfic like that about my lack of reviews, myself! (I'd probably be afraid people thought I was the same person, too...)
A truth about myself: More often than not, a really good grade or response in school or to something I've done does more to shake my confidence than a so-so or even a near-failing result.
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Date: 2007-09-28 03:07 pm (UTC)A truth about me?
April Fools Day of 1990, I was barely one year old and rushed to the hospital because a cup of scalding hot coffee burned my entire front. Unlike those who lie about things like this, I have the scars to prove it. Now, actually remembering it happening is a different story XD (parents told me).
What's a truth about you?
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Date: 2007-09-28 03:49 pm (UTC)When I graduated from college with my English degree, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I went to another, smaller college to obtain a teaching certificate, thinking I could teach high school English. I couldn't. I did fine (straight A's, the first perfect score on the entrance exam that they'd ever seen) in the coursework, but totally froze up in my student teaching semester. Despite my training, I had no real idea how to make a lesson plan or deliver it, or how to keep a rowdy class full of ninth-graders relatively quiet and attentive.
I dropped out. I dropped out and did not tell my parents, even though I was living with them, because I could not bear to admit one more failure. Instead, I got up every morning and left the house as if I were going to teach, wandered the city all day, then came home at the end of the school day. I was severely depressed and just couldn't face it, couldn't take their disappointment on top of everything else. I went on like that for months.
Norwegian group Datarock at the Beacon Theatre
Date: 2007-09-28 06:21 pm (UTC)The full article is here http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-l5389944sep27,0,7462040.story .
A truth about myself?...I'm a Cancerian, which basically means a tough outer shell & gooey insides...This has often allowed people to take advantadge...Meaning: I often do things for others that I really resent later, simply because I don't have the gumption to say no...Then, later, I feel resentful because I didn't really want to spend all day taking [Insert Name] to shop for drapes, but I did and now resent it...
Stupid, huh?...Saying no would be far easier, but I rarely say it...Doh...
ABS;)
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Date: 2007-09-28 07:03 pm (UTC)Um. They should be burned.
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Date: 2007-09-29 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 07:20 pm (UTC)I did once tell my parents that I needed the car cause I was going to dinner with a friend and ended up driving two hours, straight out of the country, to Vermont to pick up a Golden Retriever puppy (in the middle of nowhere, in the dark)...and somehow ended up hiding said pup from them for 3 days. I was not allowed a dog.
It turned out ok though...Duncan, the dog in question, is here sitting at my feet. He is now 16 years old!
I also sometimes tell people I took Organic Chemistry to make me seem more scienc-y to my engineering co-workers when I am really just a 'lowly' arts student...reality is I took 2 days of it and my brain spontaneously combusted.
LOL!
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Date: 2007-09-28 08:34 pm (UTC)double standard is ruled over society and politics
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Date: 2007-09-29 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-29 01:30 am (UTC)If I have a "spirit of the stairs moment" after a discussion I otherwise come away from having done pretty well, and if I record that discussion in my "personal" LJ (not this one), I sometimes write down that I said what I wish I'd said.
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Date: 2007-09-29 05:04 am (UTC)The first fic of the series in question I actually did read. I though it was odd and illy characterized but I'm in the midst of the second of the series which, I think, is actually the one referenced. I'm not in the position to give a review as I'm not done reading and digesting. But over-dramatized and under characterized springs to mind.
Odd, I've never been this involved in a fandom before and never realized it was this contentious. Does keep things interesting.
Truths..... I try not to keep secrets as a rule. So let's see.... I'm bipolar (manic depressive), for which I am medicated and live good life, my Shi-tzu's name is Lord Percy Percy, which should tell you something, and I have twins named Sara and Seth who will be 5 in a month less a day from today.
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Date: 2007-09-29 09:06 am (UTC)That new job I was so exicted about? yeah, it resulted in a lot of pain (home for 9 hours now, and I still ache all over... not a happy dragon here), so I'm thinking it wasn't the best carreer move. I'm actually looking into returning to fast food, instead.